Friday, September 4, 2015

Elder Olivier Handed Out 8 Livros de Mormon!

We look forward to Elder Olivier's emails each week! Before we know it he will be headed to Manaus, leaving behind the CTM in Brazil, but taking with him the precious knowledge he has gained there. We are so glad that his VISA came before his mission. He has had such wonderful opportunities to learn Portuguese while living in Brazil amongst the people and becoming immersed in the culture. He is loving his current adventure and looking forward to Manaus!

He has also enjoyed all the the letters and emails he has received! They are like gold to him! Thanks so much to everyone!

So this week has been awesome! We got to go out proselyting in SãoPaulo! It was sweet. Elder Wong and I gave out 8 Livros de Mórmon inabout an hour and a half and we also got ton of contacts! We had toride this crazy bus for a while to get to this square place where aton of people were walking. It was super herky jerky. We stood up mostof the time so other people could sit down, and it was super crowded.It was a great place to talk to a ton of people though. People are soreceptive to hearing about the church here. Almost everyone isreligious (most people are Catholic) or they seem to be interested inreligion. And not to mention how crazy it is that Elder Wong and I can(sort of) have conversations with people in portuguese. We talked tothis one guy who was out talking pictures of the city. He said hewasn´t super interested, but his mom would be, so we got him to take aBook of Mormon to his mom. He then asked us where we were from and wetold him we are from the Estados Unidos, and we´ve been here for threeweeks. He then started speaking perfect English and said "So you guystook some kind of portuguese class before you came here?" We told himno, we just started learning three weeks ago. He was SUPER surprisedand he said our portuguese was ridiculous for three weeks. I thoughtthat was funny because ten minutes before this guy was sayingsomething really fast to us about coffee and laughing at ourportuguese. Haha.

This week two a bunch of people came from the Provo MTC. They movedtwo of the elders out of our district who are going to Riberão Pretoto a new district with more people from their mission. It was kind ofsad because we´ve all become super good friends, but we still see themat meals sometimes. Oh, and by the way, everyone that comes from Provotalks about how much better the CTM is than Provo. They alwayscomplain about the food at Provo. The food is SOOOOOOO good here, eventhough half the time I don´t know what the heck it is.

Today we went to the Sâo Paulo temple again. Every Friday we go to thetemple and then we get to walk around in the city. There is this placearound the corner that sells ties to the missionaries for R$10, whichis about $3 USD. And they´re still nice ties. One of the othermissionaries in my district, Elder Lantz (he´s going to Manaus too)and I are going to snag tons of fresh ties today.

I´ve been thinking of the scripture Ether 12:27 a lot for the pastweek. It´s about how we are given weaknesses that we may be humble,and how when we are humble we can turn weaknesses into strengths. I´vedefinitely seen that firsthand here. It´s super humbling to try tospeak portuguese to brasileiros and you know that you sound like anidiot. But our whole district has come sooooooo far with the languageand with teaching skills, and I know that it´s not just because we areworking crazy hard every day. It´s because we are being guided andhelped so that we can do the Lord´s work. I took spanish in school for5 years, and in three weeks I can speak better portuguese than I couldspeak spanish. There is no way that is just from studying and sittingin a classroom.

I only have three more weeks of the CTM, so after that I´ll starthaving cooler stories. We´ve heard some crazy stuff about Manaus fromother missionaries and instructors. CRAZY stuff, about canoes andmachetes and spiders and tapeworms. The main thing people say when wesay we´re going to Manaus is, "Manus? Quente!" I can´t wait to get outinto the field! It´s going to be so awesome!Eu amo vocês!!!!!Elder Olivier(written 9/04/2015)